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Lot Essay
In 1905, Bonnard created a long, varied sequence of paintings that depict an attractive young woman, sometimes clothed and sometimes nude, posed in his Paris studio at 65, rue de Douai. Often, she is absorbed in a task such as sewing, reading, sipping tea, or looking into a mirror; in the nude studies, she is shown in the act of undressing, or she clutches a piece of discarded clothing. In Femme faisant une réussite, one of the largest paintings from the group, she has paused during a game of solitaire to gaze fixedly at the artist through a diaphanous black veil, her cheek resting on her hand, her expression at once pensive and bold.
This self-possessed coquette is almost certainly a professional model, not Bonnard’s lifelong companion and most frequent sitter, Marthe de Méligny. Her dark hair, hidden here by a hat, is usually piled on top of her head in a manner quite unlike Marthe’s distinctive bowl-shaped coiffure, and her physique is fuller and more robust than Marthe’s delicate, narrow-hipped frame. Bonnard was evidently pleased with the many paintings that this anonymous model inspired; a photograph that Vuillard took in 1905 shows nearly a dozen of them displayed on the wall of the artist’s studio (T. Hyman, Bonnard, London, 1998, p. 69).
These canvases date to an important juncture in Bonnard’s career, marked by a creative tension between his achievements in the Nabi style and his mounting interest in Impressionism. The opening of the Caillebotte bequest at the Musée du Luxembourg in 1897 had meant official state recognition for Impressionism, once disparaged and denounced for the challenge it posed to Salon norms. For Bonnard, however, who had still been a teenager when the eighth and final Impressionist Exhibition took place in 1886, the Luxembourg installation was nothing short of revelatory, as were the ensuing Impressionist shows at Durand-Ruel. “I remember very well that at that time I knew nothing about Impressionism, and we admired Gauguin’s work for itself and not in its context. When we discovered Impressionism, it came as a new enthusiasm, a sense of revelation and liberation, because Gauguin is a classic, almost a traditionalist, and Impressionism brought us freedom” (quoted in N. Watkins, Bonnard, London, 1994, p. 52).
In Femme faisant une réussite, Bonnard has retained the intimate interior space and calculated decorative structure of his Nabi work, most evident in the sinuous arabesque that sets off the black-clad form of the model against the pearly gray background. “When my friends and I decided to pick up the research of the Impressionists and try to take it further...we were stricter in composition,” Bonnard later recalled. “Art is not Nature” (quoted in ibid., p. 61). His principal interest, however, is the way that light, entering the scene from the left, illuminates the sitter’s costume, producing a series of subtle tonal gradations from silvery highlights to inky shadows. The flat areas of color that distinguish his Nabi oeuvre are nowhere in evidence; instead, he has used light to model the young woman’s form in space, lending her a commanding physical presence.
Bonnard may have had in mind a specific Impressionist prototype when he painted this canvas: Manet’s haunting portrait of Berthe Morisot clad all in black, which he would just recently have seen at the 1905 Salon d’Automne (Rouart and Wildenstein, no. 179). “The full power of these blacks, the cool simple background, the clear pink-and-white skin, the strange silhouette of the hat...” Paul Valéry wrote about Manet’s painting, “...those big eyes, vaguely gazing in profound abstraction, and offering, as it were, a presence of absence–all this combines for me into a unique sense of Poetry” (quoted in Manet, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1983, pp. 334-335). This perceptive evocation could apply equally well to Femme faisant une réussite.
This self-possessed coquette is almost certainly a professional model, not Bonnard’s lifelong companion and most frequent sitter, Marthe de Méligny. Her dark hair, hidden here by a hat, is usually piled on top of her head in a manner quite unlike Marthe’s distinctive bowl-shaped coiffure, and her physique is fuller and more robust than Marthe’s delicate, narrow-hipped frame. Bonnard was evidently pleased with the many paintings that this anonymous model inspired; a photograph that Vuillard took in 1905 shows nearly a dozen of them displayed on the wall of the artist’s studio (T. Hyman, Bonnard, London, 1998, p. 69).
These canvases date to an important juncture in Bonnard’s career, marked by a creative tension between his achievements in the Nabi style and his mounting interest in Impressionism. The opening of the Caillebotte bequest at the Musée du Luxembourg in 1897 had meant official state recognition for Impressionism, once disparaged and denounced for the challenge it posed to Salon norms. For Bonnard, however, who had still been a teenager when the eighth and final Impressionist Exhibition took place in 1886, the Luxembourg installation was nothing short of revelatory, as were the ensuing Impressionist shows at Durand-Ruel. “I remember very well that at that time I knew nothing about Impressionism, and we admired Gauguin’s work for itself and not in its context. When we discovered Impressionism, it came as a new enthusiasm, a sense of revelation and liberation, because Gauguin is a classic, almost a traditionalist, and Impressionism brought us freedom” (quoted in N. Watkins, Bonnard, London, 1994, p. 52).
In Femme faisant une réussite, Bonnard has retained the intimate interior space and calculated decorative structure of his Nabi work, most evident in the sinuous arabesque that sets off the black-clad form of the model against the pearly gray background. “When my friends and I decided to pick up the research of the Impressionists and try to take it further...we were stricter in composition,” Bonnard later recalled. “Art is not Nature” (quoted in ibid., p. 61). His principal interest, however, is the way that light, entering the scene from the left, illuminates the sitter’s costume, producing a series of subtle tonal gradations from silvery highlights to inky shadows. The flat areas of color that distinguish his Nabi oeuvre are nowhere in evidence; instead, he has used light to model the young woman’s form in space, lending her a commanding physical presence.
Bonnard may have had in mind a specific Impressionist prototype when he painted this canvas: Manet’s haunting portrait of Berthe Morisot clad all in black, which he would just recently have seen at the 1905 Salon d’Automne (Rouart and Wildenstein, no. 179). “The full power of these blacks, the cool simple background, the clear pink-and-white skin, the strange silhouette of the hat...” Paul Valéry wrote about Manet’s painting, “...those big eyes, vaguely gazing in profound abstraction, and offering, as it were, a presence of absence–all this combines for me into a unique sense of Poetry” (quoted in Manet, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1983, pp. 334-335). This perceptive evocation could apply equally well to Femme faisant une réussite.